Lost in Reminiscence
by Hawkflight7
Summary: It was a wonder - a slightly terrifying one - that she could so readily drown in his voice.


**Lost in Reminiscence**

 **Summary: It was a wonder - a slightly terrifying one - that she could so readily drown in his voice.**

 **For the Rebirth of the Daily Weird Thing [Competition]**

 **First fanfic with this particular pairing, so enjoy and tell me what ya think.**

She knocks twice on the door, gaze wandering around the rather impressive house as she waited for her friend to answer. From her last visit she knows it looks even better inside, with a mix of Japanese and Vietnamese style furnishings that compliment each other perfectly. Naho's mentor, Kibiki really did have a good eye for home design..

When she hears footsteps from beyond the door she grins, glad to know Naho is home as her friend had been busy lately, leading to them not seeing much of each other recently. One of the reasons she had come over to see Naho today.

As soon as the door opens she's ready to call out Naho's name and run forward to hug her, but stops short after taking one step forward.

It's not Naho standing at the door, but Kibiki. "Sayaka?" He gives her a kind smile, obviously not expecting to see her there. "How nice to see you again. What are you doing here?" he asks, that smile of his never fading. It was a stunning smile, one that drew her in like a moth to a flame.

He was even wearing a yukata like the first time she came over, looking very traditional and... She was seriously considering just shouting his name instead and hugging him; the same way she had planned to greet Naho just a few seconds ago. But once more she stopped herself. "It's nice to see you to, Kibiki. Is Naho home?"

"Actually she's out at that moment, but she should be back in a bit. You could come in and wait for her if you like. I was just about to make some tea, you could join me."

"Really?" Her own smile brightened. "Are you brewing the Darjeeling tea, again?" It had tasted incredible and she was sure it was because it didn't come from a tea bag, as Kibiki used a actual tea pot to brew his tea.

"I was considering it. Why don't you come inside? It's cold out there."

Sayaka smiled brightly, bouncing into the house, only pausing to take off her shoes as Kibiki closed the door behind her before heading toward the kitchen after him. It felt a bit weird without Naho here, but at the same time she was excited. She was alone with Kou Kibiki! A famous paranormal novelist writer. It was the sort of thing that only happened once in a lifetime for most people, except for Naho of course, as her friend lived at her mentor's house.

She wasn't too sure how Naho had gotten her parents to agree to it, probably something about it helping with her own job. Although Naho was the one trying to help Kibiki after his last few publications didn't do so well. Sayaka didn't see what the problem was, she had thought the books had been excellent.

"Say, Kibiki," she said as she slid onto one of the bar stools positioned around the island. "When did you know you wanted to specifically write horror paranormal novels as a career?" It was always something she had wondered, but as far as she could tell the answer had never come up in interviews, those tended to be about the books and the characters within.

Kibiki had already set a pot on the stove to boil the water and now had the tap on once again, the water set to warm as he filled the tea pot with it. "It has always interested me since I was a child. I'm not a spirit medium like Naho, so I don't have much interaction with the spirit world. But when I was young I still saw plenty of spirits. My family lived in an old village with layers of mystery, that had historically been involved with the paranormal. It was one of those towns that was filled with spirits, where the veil between our world and theirs was lowered. So even ordinary people like me could see them."

"You're calling yourself ordinary even after winning all those medals for your publications?" It may have been a bit rude to ask, but someone like him really shouldn't be saying such things like that. He wasn't ordinary as far as she could tell, and Naho would certainly disagree with Kibiki.

But Kibiki just chuckled, shutting off the tap to swirl the warm water in the pot before tipping the pot and letting the water out into the sink. "I haven't won any recently. It seems I've run out of any good best seller ideas. Most of my books that sold well were inspired by my home town. It had plenty of myths about ghosts and spirits, plenty of mysteries left unsolved. I attempted to solve them through my own writings, coming up with an explanation for the spirits being there, why they were harassing a villager or what not. If I was a spirit medium I could've gotten the truth from the spirits, but that wasn't always possible."

"So some stories were solved by the ghosts?" Sayaka asked, watching as he took a glass jar from the cupboards filled with tea leaves, the Darjeeling she suspected.

He gave a nod of his head as he took off the glass lid, taking out a teaspoon to drop two full spoonfuls into the tea pot before putting the glass jar back in the cupboards. "Yes, but I didn't write about all of them. I thought some of the material would be... too much for the readers."

"Like what?" Sayaka asked, wondering what stories she could have possibly missed out on from Kibiki's childhood and why he wouldn't write about them. Some of the material in his books did sometimes edge on gory, but it was a horror paranormal novel, so it seemed normal to her.

"Hmm." He seemed lost in thought for a moment as he added the now boiling water into the pot. "They can be quite nightmare inducing. I only learned of them as a child, but even now they still bother me."

"I can handle it." Sayaka assured him, it would only bother her if she was actually seeing these things, but with Kibiki just telling her about them she was sure she wouldn't get scared - hopefully. Besides, it would be like listening to him read one of his books out loud, which just had to be something special. Especially since it would be one he hadn't put to pen and paper.

"Well, if you really want to know." Kibiki settled into the chair across from her, setting the tea pot and two empty cups on the table before beginning to talk about one of those mysteries that still haunted him from his childhood.

She listened with a sort of morbid fascination, cringing when the story bordered on too dark; but whenever he asked her if he should stop she had urged him on, just wanting to listen to him talk, explaining everything in that rich beautiful voice of his. Even when he spoke of the gore and other things in explicit detail, as if he had been there himself - when it was really the ghost had been. Or she hoped so anyway.

Partway through he had put a tea strainer over the cups, tipping the pot to fill each one and giving her own cup when he was done. Sayaka wrapped her hands around the warm china, savoring the tea as he continued with his story.

It was only when he was finished that she mentioned having a few spirit encounters herself, being sensitive to spirits and knowing many people in the field. She told him about one of those very encounters, when she had been possessed by a ghost when she was nine - thankfully a fairly harmless one - and how she had to go to a shrine to have it extracted from her and banished to the spirit world.

"That must have been terrifying," Kibiki said after taking a sip from his own tea.

"It was." Sayaka agreed. "But it had only latched onto me so it could do the one thing that was keeping it from departing the world. I was able to help the spirit, so even though I was frightened at first I was actually sad when it had to leave, happy and able to rest in peace."

"I'm home, Kibiki," a voice called out from the entrance to the house, tearing Sayaka from the previous conversation as Naho walked into the kitchen, gaze landing on her rather than Kibiki. "Sayaka? What are you doing here?"

For a moment she couldn't find her voice as Naho's gaze flickered from her to Kibiki, trying to figure out just what she had interrupted. But for the life of her Sayaka couldn't recall the words that would answer Naho's question. Those eyes were settling on her once more when Kibiki's laughter filled the room; and then Naho's gaze was snapping back to her mentor, clearly not understanding what was so funny about the situation.

"She came to see you, Naho. I just told her she could wait inside for you to get home. You haven't talked much about her recently, so I assume you haven't seen much of each other because of your research."

"Oh." Sayaka gave a grin at her friend, doing her best to suppress the burn in her cheeks.

 **prompt: childhood memories**


End file.
